HTML5-specific tags

HTML5 introduced a number of new tags that can help you to add structure to your document, as they all have the names of common components of a document or site, such as header, footer, or article.

If you have been doing web development for a while, you will have used these names in all likelihood, but as a class to categorize <p> elements. So if you used <p class="header">, you can now use <header>. Or, to turn things around, if you already use <header>, your fallback plan to support non-HTML5-capable browsers could contain <p class="header">.

Here is a brief overview of what they are and how they can be used:

• <header>: This is used to contain the headline for a page or section. It typically contains a company logo and navigational elements.
• <footer>: Footers typically contain links to other related information, contact info, and copyright statements. Make sure you keep the latter up-to-date. People will not trust the information on a site that has a date of two years ago.
• <nav>: This container can be used for the main navigation portion of your site.
• <aside>: This tag is very useful to place the component of your side that often is placed on the left, next to everything else.
• <article> and <section>: These two are useful to better organize your document. You can use them for blog posts or, as the names suggest, articles or sections.